AC-T: WNC farmers hopeful of better summer

A week before the official start of summer, booths at farmers tailgate markets around Asheville are filled with a bounty of greens, squash, cabbages, carrots, beets, cucumbers, turnips and even early tomatoes.

This year is far different scene than in last year’s growing season, when many crops lay rotting in lakes that were once fields, the bins at their booths mostly barren as the result of record-setting rains with little sunshine to offer relief to waterlogged roots.

Though it’s still early in the season and there’s no predicting future weather, farmers at the Saturday markets were smiling as they weighed and bagged shoppers’ farm-grown riches.